Adam Raszynski retaliated against his mother, knowingly and willingly, by throwing her down the stairs and stomping on her head after she shot him, prosecutors told the jury in closing arguments this afternoon.

“He grabs her and says, 'You had your chance and now I'm going to have to terminate you,'” said Adrian Van Nice, a prosecutor with the Boulder County District Attorney's Office. “Is that a moment of incoherent rage, or does he know exactly what he's doing? It's what it takes to get her back -- that's not self-defense.”

Raszynski's lawyer, Seth Temin, countered in his closing that the case before the jury is all about self-defense. A man shot five times, who is “grievously injured,” is doing all he can to eliminate the murderous threat his mother posed to him.

“This man was forced by his mother's actions to defend himself,” Temin said. “He was forced to kill his mother, who he loved and still loves.”

After closings were finished, Boulder District Judge Thomas Mulvahill handed the case over to the jury after dismissing the two alternate jurors. They left the courtroom to begin deliberations at 4:12 p.m. They left the building shortly after 5 p.m. and will continue deliberations Thursday morning.

Raszynski is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 23, 2011 death of his mother, Rita Redford, in her Lafayette townhome. The jury has no lesser charges to consider in the case but must take into account whether Raszynski acted in self-defense or in the heat of passion.

If convicted, he could face eight to 48 years in prison.

“In this case, you have to ask yourself what could have happened to get a mother to shoot her first born child?” Van Nice asked the jury.

She said Redford, 60, lived in fear of her son and locked herself away in her bedroom to avoid him. Her friends testified that she was worried about him and afraid for her safety as he became more bellicose and erratic, Van Nice said.

“She could no longer get him to come back from the edge,” she said.

Van Nice said the evidence shows that Raszynski not only threw his mother down the stairs and stomped on her, but also strangled her. She said the broken blood vessels in Redford's eyes and the marks on the side of her neck was proof that she was strangled.

And Van Nice said Raszynski taunted his mother, coming out of the kitchen and challenging her to shoot him.

“What do you got Mom? You gotta gun?” Van Nice quoted the defendant as saying. “What are you gonna do Mom? You gonna shoot me?”

Van Nice said medical witnesses testified that Redford was still alive after she hit the ground at the bottom of the stairs.

“He picked up his size 11 feet, and he stomped on her face,” she said. “And he did it more than once, and he did it hard enough to knock out a tooth. She was unarmed, she was disabled, and she wasn't getting up.”

Van Nice said the defense's focus on Redford's drug consumption is merely a distraction from the brutal murder she endured at the hands of her son.

But Temin, Raszynski's lawyer, told the jury the prosecution's case can't be proven, “so they made up a a story.”

“Adam Raszynski acted on that date to save his life,” Temin said.

He said Raszynski's mother was taking huge amounts of prescription drugs and medical marijuana and that may have influenced her actions on Feb. 23, 2011. But whatever drove her, he said, there's no evidence that she was being attacked by her son when she started shooting.

“This isn't the Wild West, that's not OK,” he said. “You can't just kill people. That's our government's position in this case?”

Temin asked the jury why Redford didn't just stay in her room until the police arrived after the first 911 call from her house was made minutes before the confrontation.

“Why wouldn't she lock the door?” he asked. “Why wouldn't she just wait?”

Temin also said that self-defense law in Colorado covers defendants who act to protect themselves as long as they reasonably believe their lives are still being threatened, even if that analysis turns out to be wrong ultimately.

“If he reasonably believed she had a gun, he's allowed to act on that,” the lawyer said.

Temin said his client thought his mother was going to get more bullets – she had 193 in her room – and did what he had to do to stop her from firing any more bullets into him.

“How would you expect anyone to act who has almost been murdered?” he asked.

And Temin said there's no evidence that Redford died from any stomping action on her face. He said her face had no broken bones and that a forensic examiner testified that her head hitting the floor at the bottom of the stairs was enough to kill her.

And the shoeprint, firearm and blood evidence doesn't help the prosecution's assertion that Redford was stomped on, Temin told the jury.

“But they made the decision, somebody died, we're going to charge somebody,” he said.

He asked the jury to imagine what would happen if the situation were reversed, and Redford killed her son after being shot by him five times.

“Would the government have charged her?” he asked. “No, they would probably have given her an award as a survivor of some sort of domestic violence.”

Prosecutor Ryan Brackley, during rebuttal, said Redford doesn't get the chance to come to court and tell her side of the story. But he said the evidence in the case does that for her.

“It all comes down to the murder, the killing, of an unarmed disabled woman who is no longer a threat,” he said.

UPDATE: 2:05 p.m.

The judge has begun giving jury instructions to the nine men and five women on the jury. That will be followed by closing arguments, likely sometime this hour.

Boulder District Judge Thomas Mulvahill said he would limit closings to an hour for each side.

Raszynski is charged with second-degree murder. There are no lesser and included charges being offered to the jury and self-defense will be a consideration in determining guilt.

Both sides in Adam Raszynski's second-degree murder trial have now rested and the judge has given the jury an extended lunch hour so the lawyers can formulate jury instructions.

Closing arguments are expected later this afternoon.

Prosecutors called in a rebuttal witness earlier this morning – Rita Redford's doctor Hillary Browne – to testify about the drugs she prescribed to her patient.

The defense immediately pounced during cross-examination, asking Browne if she had any idea what amounts of the prescribed drugs Redford may have taken on any given day and whether she mixed them with large quantities of medical marijuana.

Browne said no.

She told the jury she never prescribed more than the therapeutic amount of Prozac, muscle relaxant, Valium or pain medication to Redford, but could not say how her patient was using those drugs once at home.

Prosecutor Ryan Brackley asked Browne if she ever noticed Redford to be in an altered state when she visited her office. The doctor said no.

UPDATE: 10:19 a.m.

A clinical psychologist called by the defense told the jury this morning that in a life-threatening situation, the rational brain essentially shuts down and an instinctive “fight or flight” reaction kicks in.

Laura Leach testified that if there's no obvious escape, “we're going to fight to the death.” She said that could result in overreaction due to a distortion in thinking given the trauma of the situation.

Defense attorney Seth Temin asked her if someone who is injured or feels that their life is threatened could believe that the threat is still present even if it isn't.

“It's based on what you perceive not necessarily on what is real,” Leach responded.

Temin asked her if it is common for people to overreact in extremely stressful situations.

“Definitely,” she said. “The natural instinct is to fight.”

Prosecutor Adrian Van Nice challenged Leach's analysis by asking her if human rationality really shuts down or if it is simply a little slower to manifest in life-threatening situations than instinct.

Van Nice asked the doctor if the scholarly sources she cited in the report she prepared for the defense was based on experts who had written about the fight or flight response in the context of animal responses. She agreed that was the case.

Leach also agreed that the human brain is more complex than the animal brain and that the rational mind allows humans to evaluate a situation and its threat level.

Van Nice suggested that with the gun lying in two pieces on the floor, and a door nearby as an exit, gave Raszynski both the information that the threat was over and provided him an opportunity to escape.

But Temin countered that things are never so clear in such a dramatic situation, especially to someone severely injured.

“Would it make sense for someone to stop, unlock and unbolt a door, in order to get away?” he asked.

“No,” Leach said.

He asked if it would make sense for someone in his client's condition to take the time to judge whether there were any bullets left in the magazine or where the weapon lay in relation to the gun's owner.

“No, it wouldn't,” Leach said. “They are going to continue to fight for their lives and eliminate that threat. It may or may not be reality -- it's from their perspective.”

After Leach was finished, the defense rested its case. Now the prosecution is questioning Rita Redford's doctor, Hillary Browne, as a rebuttal witness. The judge just let the jury out for a break.

UPDATE: 9:06 a.m.

A clinical psychologist, Laura Leach, has been called to the stand by the defense as Adam Raszynski's second-degree murder trial enters its sixth day.

Leach is talking about the "fight or flight" instinct in people.

Raszynski, 34, is charged with killing his mother, Rita Redford, last year in her townhome in Lafayette. Prosecutors say he threw his mother down some stairs and then stomped on her head and neck, killing her.

Raszynski's lawyers counter that their client, shot five times by Redford, was simply defending himself during the incident.

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